It Is Not Anti-Immigrant To Be Pro-American!

Congress convened this past September 9th, a day that was bracketed by two important dates on America's calendar. Labor Day which this year, fell on September 2ndand September 11th which, this year, marked the 12th anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks ever carried out on American soil and resulted in the slaughter of more than 3,000 innocent victims.

There has been much speculation as to what, if anything, the House of Representatives will do in dealing with immigration and the just-passed Senate immigration legislation, S.744 (Comprehensive Immigration Reform).

Both of these dates and what they represent, must frame any discussion about immigration. Additionally, the myriad ongoing failures of the immigration system should raise the question of how would DHS effectively administer a massive amnesty program, when it is unable to carry out its current missions with even a modicum of integrity?

There are other questions that must be asked about Comprehensive Immigration Reform that are not being asked and consequently, not being answered. On July 3, 2013 the Washington Times published my Op-Ed:

There are many well-funded groups that are currently pushing for passage of a massive amnesty program for unknown millions of illegal aliens whose true identities including their true countries of citizenship, date, place and manner of entry is unknown and unverifiable. There is also no definitive way to know what their backgrounds are in their home countries and other countries where they may have resided before entering the United States. There is no way of knowing their ultimate goals in entering the United States.

These groups are applying incredible pressure on our elected officials on all levels of government, especially Congress, where they seek to ram Comprehensive Immigration Reform down our throats. For most of these groups, the motivation is profit and power.

While not all inclusive, it does provide a good idea as to how many individuals and organizations see the potential for huge profits at the expense of America and American workers and their families.

These open borders advocates, whom I have come to refer to as "Immigration Anarchists" also continue to propagating the lie that it is "Anti-Immigrant" to favor securing America's borders against illegal entry and to effectively enforce the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. They also use terms such as "nativism" and "racism" in an effort to intimidate and bully those who understand the true significance of border security and immigration law enforcement. Some members of Congress have apparently been hoodwinked, intimidated or otherwise coerced into accepting these outrageous lies.

The reality is that the immigration laws make no distinction about the race, religion or ethnicity of those who would seek to enter the United States. Furthermore, not all American citizens were born in the United States. Each year the United States admits more than one million lawful immigrants who are immediately placed on the pathway to United States citizenship. Each year more than a half million lawful immigrants become naturalized citizens. Under America's laws and traditions, these naturalized citizens must certainly be considered "Americans!"

How on earth is it "anti-immigrant" to support the current immigration laws that each year enable more than one million lawful immigrants to enter the United States and hundreds of thousands of lawful immigrants to naturalize?

In point of fact, it would be antithetical to the best interests of America, Americans and lawful immigrants for the United States to enact a massive amnesty program that would involve unknown millions of illegal aliens, whose identities backgrounds and goals in coming to the United States are unknown and unknowable and also provide competition for scarce jobs.

On September 3, 2013 I joined Congressman Lou Barletta in a town hall meeting on the campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, to discuss the impact of illegal immigration. Rep. Barletta is a member of the Congressional Homeland Committee, Subcommittee on Border Security. The event was covered by C-SPAN and the video of the discussion is well worth watching.

Most medical doctors take the "Hippocratic Oath" when they graduate from medical school, to provide them with a moral compass to guide them in their practice of medicine, concerning how they will treat their patients. The classic version of that oath contains a sentence that should be added to the oaths of office for all of our elected officials, but rather than apply to patients, as it does for medical practitioners, it should apply to the citizens politicians are elected to represent.

"I will keep them from harm and injustice."

That elegant phrase also eloquently describes what should be the goals of our laws, including our immigration laws.

All too often, politicians pander to those who oppose effective immigration law enforcement in order to garner major campaign contributions. In exchange for those contributions they wind up undermining national security and the lives and livelihoods of the constituents they were elected to represent.

Labor Day was established to pay tribute to American workers, the most productive workers on earth. It is celebrated as millions of our students return to school to receive an education that will hopefully, prepared them for a lifetime of work and achievement. While just about every elected official attending labor parades and celebrations boast about their efforts to create jobs, few discuss how enforcement of the immigration law could, literally overnight, liberate jobs, thereby getting Americans back to work.

America's immigration laws were enacted to protect innocent lives and the jobs of American workers, yet the administration never discusses this fact nor do those who support massive amnesty programs for unknown millions or, perhaps, tens of millions of illegal and undocumented aliens.

Let us begin with the national security/public safety component of immigration law enforcement.

Among the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act is Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182, which establishes the categories of aliens who are statutorily ineligible to enter the United States.

This statute establishes that aliens who suffer dangerous communicable diseases or who suffer from extreme mental illness and are prone to violence or are sex offenders are to be prevented from entering the United States as are aliens who have been previously deported, are convicted felons, or are fugitives from justice. Additionally, aliens who are human rights violators, war criminals, spies and terrorists are also deemed excludible as are aliens who would become public charges or work illegally, thereby displacing Americans in the workforce or causing wages or working conditions to be adversely impacted.

The9/11 Commission Reportaddressed the importance of the immigration inspections process conducted at ports of entry noting:

Inspectors at the ports of entry were not asked to focus on terrorists. Inspectors told us they were not even aware that when they checked the names of incoming passengers against the automated watchlist, they were checking in part for terrorists. In general, border inspectors also did not have the information they needed to make fact-based determinations of admissibility. The INS initiated but failed to bring to completion two efforts that would have provided inspectors with information relevant to counterterrorism-a proposed system to track foreign student visa compliance and a program to establish a way of tracking travelers' entry to and exit from the United States.45

Aliens who circumvent the inspections process altogether by running our borders or stowing away on ships do so because they know that they belong to one or more categories of aliens who are statutorily ineligible to enter the United States.

Yet 12 years after the attacks of 9/11, border security along U.S./Mexican border is being used as a bargaining chip by politicians hell-bent on providing unknown millions of illegal aliens with lawful status and identity documents. Other methods of entering the United States without inspection by illegal aliens are being summarily ignored. In point of fact, aliens who evade the inspections process render any enhancements to watchlists and other defensive measures at ports of entry moot.

Aliens who enter via the inspections process, but then seek to violate the terms of their admission and who may have committed fraud in applying for the United States, are not being sought by ICE.

The Washington Times published a disturbing report on July 20, 2013 entitled:

The Homeland Security Department has lost track of more than 1 million people who it knows arrived in the U.S. but who it cannot prove left the country, according to an audit Tuesday that also found the department probably won't meet its own goals for deploying an entry-exit system.

The findings were revealed as Congress debates an immigration bill, and the Government Accountability Office's report could throw up another hurdle because lawmakers in the House and Senate have said that any final deal must include a workable system to track entries and exits and cut down on so-called visa overstays.

Prior to the Second World War, the enforcement and administration of America's immigration laws was primarily the responsibility of the United States Department of Labor. The goal was to protect American workers from unfair foreign competition. By protecting hard working Americans from such unfair competition, America built the most vibrant middle class and with it the "American Dream."

The mission of enforcing and administering the immigration laws was transferred to the Department of Justice to help protect the United States during the Second World War.

Having raised the issue of the Second World War, it is important to read the account of the apprehension, during the Second World War, of Nazi saboteurs by the U.S. Coastguard and the FBI as posted on the FBI website.

Here are the first several paragraphs of this fascinating account of this case, that could have served as the script for a James Bond film:

Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 13, 1942, four men landed on a beach near Amagansett, Long Island, New York from a German submarine, clad in German uniforms and bringing ashore enough explosives, primers, and incendiaries to support an expected two-year career in the sabotage of American defense-related production. On June 17, 1942, a similar group landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, near Jacksonville, Florida, equipped for a similar career in industrial disruption.

The purpose of the invasions was to strike a major blow for Germany by bringing the violence of war to our home ground through destruction of America's ability to manufacture vital equipment and supplies and transport them to the battlegrounds of Europe; to strike fear into the American civilian population; and to diminish the resolve of the United States to overcome our enemies.

By June 27, 1942, all eight saboteurs had been arrested without having accomplished one act of destruction. Tried before a military commission, they were found guilty. One was sentenced to life imprisonment, another to 30 years, and six received the death penalty, which was carried out within a few days.

The magnitude of the euphoric expectation of the Nazi war machine may be judged by the fact that, in addition to the large amount of material brought ashore by the saboteurs, they were given $175,200 in United States currency to finance their activities. On apprehension, a total of $174,588 was recovered by the FBI-the only positive accomplishment of eight trained saboteurs in those two weeks was the expenditure of $612 for clothing, meals, lodging, and travel, as well as a bribe of $260.

So shaken was the German intelligence service that no similar sabotage attempt was ever again made. The German naval high command did not again allow a valuable submarine to be risked for a sabotage mission.

This fascinating FBI report contained many more facts- and, in some ways, what happened back then, closely parallels the way that our nation faces the threat of terrorist attacks today. Consider how we have seen instances where immigrants from Middle Eastern countries have been enticed into attending training camps in the Middle East to learn how to attack the United States.

The arrest of these eight would-be saboteurs prevented a series of potentially serious attacks against our nation.

For the saboteurs, their goal was to get behind "enemy lines" to attack the United States. For them and for terrorists today, our borders- whether they are found along the northern or southern borders, along our coastline or at international airports is where the "enemy line" exists.

The excerpt from the FBI report noted that the high cost of submarines inhibited the Nazis and convinced them to never again attempt to send saboteurs to the United States. Terrorists today don't need a submarine to get to the United States today- only an airline ticket! In fact, the vital visa process that serves as an important layer of security if properly administered, is being stripped away through the ever-expanding Visa Waiver Program that now permit the citizens of 37 countries to enter the United States for a limited period of time without first applying for and receiving a visa.

It took the United States, working in close cooperation with its allies, just 44 months to bring World War II to a successful conclusion. It required that fleets of a wide variety of aircraft- bombers, fighter planes and others, be designed and rushed into production. Similarly new ships including aircraft carriers, battleships, Liberty Ships, PT boats and others were hurriedly designed and constructed in large numbers. New weapons systems were developed and produced including nuclear weapons. All in just 44 months.

The United States was attacked twice in 1993 by international terrorists from the Middle East who had easily gamed the visa process and immigration benefits program. This was more than 20 years ago. The continuing failures to address these vulnerabilities left America wide open to the terrorist attacks that would follow on September 11, 2001.

It was known that visa fraud and immigration benefit fraud were among the vulnerabilities that made the 9/11 attacks possible. In fact, on May 20, 1997, more than four years before the attacks of 9/11, the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims conducted a hearing that was predicated on the two attacks of 1993 on the topic:

I participated as a witness at that hearing. It was my first appearance before a Congressional hearing but hardly my last. However, I would not be invited to testify before additional hearings until after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

It was clear that the immigration system had failed to prevent the entry of terrorists and that it had also failed to deprive them the opportunity to embed themselves in the United States, enabling them to hide in plain sight.

The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel detailed numerous examples of instances where terrorists not only made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud to enter the United States but to also embed themselves in the United States. Page 47 of this report noted

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.

This paragraph is found on page 98 under the title "Immigration Benefits:"

"Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack."

Yet the administration continues to refuse to effectively enforce the immigration laws that are supposed to protect the lives and jobs of American citizens and members of Congress have actually debated whether supposed border security should precede a massive amnesty program for unknown millions of illegal aliens whose true identities and purposes for violating America's borders and immigration laws are known only to them.

While the 9/11 Commission was critical of so-called "sanctuary cities" that refuse to take immigration factors into account in enforcing laws, the federal government never takes action against such cities and states, such as New York City which has a sanctuary policy in place.

Incredibly, New York City's Mayor Bloomberg, who is adamant about maintaining "Stop and Frisk" and has often demanded that those who trespass into public housing in New York be arrested and prosecuted because they pose a threat to the safety of the residents of those housing complexes, refuses to accept that it is no less dangerous when millions of aliens trespass on America.

On October 12, 2012 CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization) posted my commentary

Bloomberg said. "The people that live there, (in public housing) most of them, want more police protection. They want more people. If you have strangers walking in the halls of your apartment building, don't you want somebody to stop and say, ‘Who are you, why are you here?'"

Bloomberg blithely ignores the fact that those who violate our borders and immigration laws are not unlike the trespassers in public housing, who have so attracted his ire. If he could come to that commonsense understanding, he would then understand just how perilous it is that there are millions of foreign nationals (aliens) who live in towns and cities, including New York, whose true identities, backgrounds and intentions for coming to America are unknown and unknowable. You have to wonder if he lacks "mouth/ear coordination" in that his ears seem to not hear what his own mouth is saying!

Ironically, the questions posed by Bloomberg, "Who are you, why are you here?" are essentially the very same questions that CBP Inspectors ask arriving foreign visitors- question that are never asked (or answered) by millions of illegal aliens who enter the United States by running our borders.

The quarterly publication, "The Social Contract" recently published my article in its Summer, 2013 edition, on how fraud in the political asylum program, a program of which I am a staunch supporter, enables our enemies to see in America's compassion, weakness. The title of my article was:

The springboard for my piece was the terrorist attacks conducted by the Tsarnaev brothers at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. According to publicly available information, they had been granted political asylum in the United States, apparently claiming "credible fear" that they would face persecution, or perhaps worse, if they were to return to their native Russia. Published reports indicated that subsequent to being granted to political asylum they did, nevertheless, travel to Russia of their own volition, calling into question the bona fides of their claims of credible fear.

On May 2, 2013 I was interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News to discuss the immigration aspects of this case. Fox News posted a video of the interview on its website with the title:

There are many additional examples of how terrorists and criminals have been able to game the immigration system, here is yet another example worth considering.

On Friday, May 24, 2013 "The Blaze" and "My San Antonio," reported on the arrest of Wissam Allouche by the FBI and members of the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) in San Antonio, Texas, for lying on his application for naturalization to acquire United States citizenship.

While his application for naturalization was approved and he was arrested and indicted for committing fraud in filing that application years earlier- what no one has pointed out is that in addition to allegedly successfully gaming the naturalization process, he had been a lawful immigrant for years. He had a Green Card for at least three years before he applied for United States citizenship. It is vital to understand that the lack of integrity to the process by which aliens are granted lawful status in the United States- including resident alien status and United States citizenship poses an immediate and direct threat to national security.

Here is an important excerpt from "The Blaze" article:

The federal indictment revealed Allouche had married a U.S. citizen and was going through the naturalization process when he was arrested. When asked by officials if he had ever been associated with a terrorist organization, he replied no. That apparently turned out to be a lie.

According to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, he was a militant with the Amal militia in Lebanon in the early to mid-1980s. He was reportedly captured as a Israeli prisoner of war, but was later released to become a commander of the Amal militia.

"News reports at the time said Hezbollah was formed by religious members of the Amal movement,"

In addition to lying about his terror ties, Allouche is also accused of lying about his relationship with his ex-wife. He falsely claimed on his application forms in 2009 that he and his wife were married and living together for the past three years. In reality, they had no lived together since May 2007 and they filed for divorce in December of 2007.

At the time of his arrest Allouche was applying for a security clearance in order to work for the Department of Defense and had also applied for naturalization. Allegedly he lied by claiming to have never been a member of a terrorist organization when in fact,, according to the FBI, he had been a member of Hezbollah.

On Wednesday, May 29, 2013 both of those newspapers published follow-up reports in conjunction with disclosures made by prosecutors during the bail hearing.

Here is a quote from the latest "My San Antonio" news report about Allouche:

Allouche was arrested by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force here last week after being indicted on charges of not disclosing, during his quest to obtain his U.S. citizenship, his membership in the Amal militia and Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980s.

He's also charged with not disclosing his prior membership in those groups when he applied for a security clearance with the Defense Department as he sought a contracting job.

Before 2009, Allouche worked for L-3 Communications, which provides linguistic services for the U.S. military, and he was deployed for several months to Iraq. He has lived in the U.S. since about 2002, and once owned Windcrest Mobil, a gas station at Walzem Road and Interstate 35, his lawyer said.

In view of the charges lodged against Allouche, it would be important to know what the vetting process was that enabled him to be put in a position of trust.

We should be greatly concerned about what documents or people he may have had access to. Did he come to meet with covert officers whose identities must be preserved? Did he meet with suspected terrorists and, perhaps, have the capability to alter what the record reflects that they did or did not say? Might he have learned the identities of foreign nationals who for whatever reason decided to become cooperators? Has this endangered their lives and the operations that they were providing information for?

What should be on everyone's mind is the searing question, "How many more immigrants and naturalized citizens may have gamed the immigration system as an embedding tactic, as the 9/11 Commission warned about?"

Next we need to consider the impact of Comprehensive Immigration Reform and failures of the current immigration system on the economy and America's workers and their families.

While we are frequently told that the unemployment rate is in the mid 7% range, the reality is far, far worse. The unemployment statistics are so "cooked" as to be worthless. What is important to note is that these statistics do not include workers who have given up seeking work or who have been unemployed for so long that they no longer collect unemployment benefits.

Zuckerman noted that the biggest difference between today's economic crisis and the Great Depression is that in the 1930s there were long lines of starving Americans waiting to be fed at soup kitchens while today's poor are invisible, staying home and receiving Social Security checks and food stamps.

Here is how Zuckerman described the growing American economic crisis:

"Today millions are assisted by checks from Social Security and by food stamps. Food-stamp enrollment has been rising at the rate of 400,000 per month. More than 47 million Americans now depend on that program, an almost incredible record, for it is 15 percent of the population compared with the 7.9 percent who received food stamps from 1970 to 2000.

"Meanwhile, nearly 11 million Americans are now collecting federal disability checks from Social Security, and half have signed on since President Obama came to office. In 1992, there was one person on disability for every 35 workers. Today it is one for every 16. Such an increase simply cannot have been caused by direct disability experienced during employment. This is in effect another unemployment program, one without end. Many of the people on disability would normally be considered unemployed."

The advocates for Comprehensive Immigration Reform are quick to ignore the fundamental fact that adding millions of additional authorized foreign workers to an already over-crowded and unemployed or underemployed labor pool would not create more jobs for desperate American workers but do precisely the opposite.

What is also not generally acknowledged or reported, by nearly every news organization, is that already, each month, many tens of thousands of authorized foreign workers are admitted into the United States so that they can work. This includes the nearly 100,000 lawful immigrants who enter the United States each month, who are given "Green Cards" and are immediately placed on the pathway to United States citizenship, along with nonimmigrant workers including workers with H-1B visas and other such nonimmigrant work visas. Additionally, there are exchange visitor programs which also provide foreign workers with opportunities to work in the United States. Foreign students are almost always provided with practical training, which means they are authorized to be gainfully employed in the United States as well.

These massive additions to the American labor pool each month, through the admission of lawful immigrants and non-immigrant foreign workers, all too frequently provides unfair competition for desperate American workers who are will forced to compete with a growing population of authorized foreign workers who are willing to work for lower wages. This forces all too many American workers to have to run up a "down escalator" that is picking up speed!

America's labor movement was a reaction to the unscrupulous employment practices of many employers of the 19th and 20th centuries. America responded to such abominations as the employment of children in factories by passing child labor laws. The death of factory workers at the Triangle Shirt Factory resulted in labor safety laws being enacted.

While some employers understood the need for fairness in the workplace, all too many found that outsourcing jobs to foreign countries could enable them to greatly reduce wages and circumvent labor laws that deal with safety and working conditions.

Traditionally employers want to pay the lowest possible wages to their employees and provide them with the least benefits, while workers want to be paid as much as possible with the best benefits they can get. These conflicting objectives are not unlike the negotiations that buyers and sellers engage in every day. Today the most powerful titans of industry are exerting pressure on politicians through campaign contributions and expensive ad campaigns to push for the flooding of the labor pool with foreign workers. Labor is a commodity and not unlike all other commodities, when the quantity of a commodity is increased while the demand for that commodity remains constant, the value of the commodity decreases.

Flooding the labor market with foreign workers has lowered the wages of most American workers driving many families below the poverty line. In addition to the obvious detrimental effect this has on quality of life issues and further creating a vicious cycle preventing the United States' economy from crawling out of the deep hole it is in, there are other important, indeed, devastating consequences.

On August 30, 2013 "Business Insider" published a Reuters news article:

The title of that alarming report makes it clear that poverty often becomes self-perpetuating.

Notwithstanding these facts, many corporate executives are eager to import foreign workers and foreign students, apparently to lower wages and increase corporate profit. This is apparently the driving force behind the assertions by such individuals as Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg, that there are not enough high tech workers in the United States and that the United States must import entrepreneurs if America is to remain successful. What no one seems to have noticed that they themselves, are all native-born American citizens. Additionally, while Elon Musk, the founder of Pay-Pal, the Tesla car company and Space-X, was born in South Africa but he was provided with lawful status in the United States, providing clear evidence that this component of the immigration system, already in place works. However, the lack of integrity and ability to weed out fraud in work-based visas all too often provides aliens with visas they would not have been granted if the fraud had been uncovered.

The infamous bank robber, Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks said simply, "That's where the money is!" Today CEO's seek to find employees oversees in Third World countries because that where the cheap labor is!

These corporate executives make the case that when foreign students who acquire advanced degrees return to their home countries, America loses the benefit of their skills and education. Here is the solution to this supposed problem that no one has had the intelligence or, more likely, integrity to suggest:

Let's make certain that every qualified and motivated American student, irrespective of race, religion and ethnicity gets every possible chance to attend those institutions of higher learning. When they "return home" it will be to their houses and apartments in towns and cities across America! When they succeed in acquiring that education they will lift themselves up and in so doing, boost the economy of the United States of America and help diminish America's rapidly ballooning national debt.

This would get America and Americans working and break the spiral of poverty.

Nevertheless, on September 11, 2013 Newsmax published a report about a purportedly scheduled meeting to be conducted by Zuckerberg and Republican Congressional leaders to persuade them to support Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The article was titled:

Among the witnesses called to testify before that hearing was Alan Greenspan, arguably one of the key architects of the economic crisis, who stated. In part:

"...The second bonus (in accelerating the influx of skilled immigrant workers) would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality."

Clearly Greenspan demonstrated unmitigated chutzpah, referring to skilled Americans as the "privileged elite" and that "Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled." His infuriating goal of reducing skill-based income inequality is nothing short of anti-American in both ways of interpreting that statement. It flies in the face of the American dream and would serve to pull the floor out from under American middle class workers and their families!

It is incredible that one of the key architects of the economic meltdown of the U.S. economy, Alan Greenspan, as reported in a Fox News Report, was the "expert" Schumer called upon to provide advice on immigration and wages of American workers!

On the topic of foreign students, it is important to noted that the GAO estimates that there are currently some 850,000 such foreign students in the United States and some 10,000 schools that are authorized to petition the government for the issuance visas for foreign students. The GAO report made it clear that this program lacks integrity because of a lack of resources to investigate each school to make certain that it is not simply a "mill" created to obtain tuition fees and providing aliens with opportunities to enter the United States who have no intention of studying in the United States.

This also poses a huge threat to national security- a threat that Comprehensive Immigration Reform would not diminish but greatly exacerbate.

On March 19, 2002 I testified before a hearing convened by the House Immigration Subcommittee on the topic:

"INS'S MARCH 2002 NOTIFICATION OF APPROVAL OF CHANGE OF STATUS FOR PILOT TRAINING FOR TERRORIST HIJACKERS MOHAMMED ATTA AND MARWAN AL-SHEHHI"

The hearing was covered by C-SPAN and the videoof that entire hearing is certainly worth watching!

What is unfathomable is that the student visa program still lacks adequate integrity even 12 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. GAO reportthat was issued in June 2012 and bore the title:

Comprehensive Immigration Reform would not provide for additional integrity for any of the components of the immigration system but would force the beleaguered adjudications officers to have to work much faster to attempt to keep up with the onslaught of applications. It is important to note that it only takes minutes to approve an application but hours or days to deny an application because a thorough report must be prepared when an application is denied to withstand the legal challenge that will likely be filed by the applicant whose application is denied.

On June 13, 2013 I was interviewed by Neil Cavuto at Fox News on the topic:

The answer to that question is self-evident. Rewarding illegal conduct with benefits only encourages more violations of law. America's borders and immigration laws are its first line of defense and last line of defense. Comprehensive Immigration Reform would do nothing to restore integrity to the immigration system or help beleaguered unemployed and underemployed American workers find work. Indeed, both of those critical challenges would be exacerbated by such an ill-conceived program and must never see the light of day.

Nature's laws are immutable. The speed of light is not dependent on a cop with a radar gun and summons book. Legislated laws, on the other hand are meaningless and worthless without enforcement.

When drunk driving became the focus of so many people who had lost loved ones to drunk drivers, the commonsense demand was made that laws against drunk driving be enforced and, indeed, enforced more aggressively. Legally permissible blood/alcohol levels for motorists were lowered. Many local and state police departments established "sobriety checkpoints" and drivers who were found to be over the legal limit were arrested and their cars were impounded. These drivers faced heavy fines and even jail time.

Drunk driving declined as a result of stepped up enforcement and more stringent penalties having been imposed. Lives have thus been saved.

If the same approach, taken by supporters of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, had been adopted to address the issue of drunk driving, acceptable blood/alcohol levels would have been greatly increased so that when inebriated drivers crashed and injured or killed pedestrians and other motorists, the politicians could blithely say that the drivers who were involved in those deadly crashes weren't legally drunk, thus claiming that drunk driving is not a problem!

It is time for a reality check. Effective enforcement, including the addition of adequate resources, is the solution to the rampant levels of law violations where our vital immigration laws are concerned, to help protect American lives and the livelihoods of American workers.

Michael W. Cutler, is a retired INS Senior Special Agent. His career with the INS spanned some 30 years. He has provided expert witness testimony at more than a dozen Congressional hearings, he provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission and provides expert testimony at state legislative hearings across the country and in trials where immigration is at issue.

Mr. Cutler is a Senior Fellow at CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization) where his articles focus on border security and immigration issues especially where they impact national security, community safety, the economy and a host of other issues.

Hie can be reached through his website, http://michaelcutler.net/thatcontains his commentaries, Congressional testimony and links to his appearances on national television news programs and other public venues.

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